Chapter 3

Loran

We ride, the two of us sharing one horse until the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. Then, we stop at a village to eat some more of the bread and cut my hair. It was too dangerous to cross the border into Allerakin looking like the Erelarian Princess with a name so similar.

Terrient wants to be careful, so he leaves me in the forest nearby while he goes to find someone capable of cutting it. He comes back about fifteen minutes later. I leave the tree I had huddled against for shade, and we venture into the buzzing town to the place he previously found. He ties Lottie to a post and escorts me inside.

"Bala. Hello." A man holding a pair of silver shears stood behind a tall, wooden chair.

"Lan bi ith, nay ech viershath." Terrient spoke in return to the shaggy-haired man's greeting. "All of it, to the shoulders." They were speaking Erelarian, which I spoke fluently. It was the tongue of the land.

I sit in the chair, and he strokes through my hair and then takes the shears and snips one, big, uneven cut. He then takes a few minutes to even it out, and then gestures for me to stand. Terrient hands him a coin.

"Ilang ie. Thank you." I timidly say. The man only grunts, and Terrient leads me back out.

We untie Lottie and continue our journey to the border. My hair feels so strange, just how it rests upon my neck. I feel so much lighter without the long coat of hair.

Around sunset, we reach the border. It's not under very heavy patrol, but nonetheless we ride through off of the path to lower our risk of being spotted.

I think I doze off on his back and begin to drool, because the next thing I remember is that it was pitch black and I am leaning against a slobber soaked shirt. I sit up and gaze up at the sky. "Are we there yet?" I question him groggily.

"Any minute now," He mutters, but clearly his focus is on the street signs of the small village that we are riding through. I look around and soak up my surroundings. Wooden buildings line the dirt roads. Each building is two stories and has a wooden porch with a roof held up by four or so posts. The bottoms of most of them look like shops, but the further we get, the houses look more run down. Eventually we come to one where one of the posts is broken and the roof sags, the upstairs window is boarded up, the porch is splintering, and a front window is broken and jagged.

"Mit test ith? Is this it?" I ask.

Terrient nods, dismounting. "Omama Mae's shey. Grandma Mae's house."

I dismount the house. Terrient urges me on as he ties up the horse. He steps forward carefully onto the porch and raises his fist to knock. One knock is all he does, rather than the usual two or three. He pulls his hand back quickly as if it hurt. If we are caught, all is lost.

I strain my ears to hear the sounds that lie beyond the door. Shuffling. At the slight opening of the door, Terrient shoves me inside a dark room. I bump into a frail older lady, who then topples over onto the wall, making a big BUMP noise. Terrient and I both freeze.

After a second of only hearing the crickets chirping, we begin to move again.

Terrient opens the door further and comes in, quietly closing it. "Aunt Mae." he begins calmly. "I'd like to meet someone." Haisha Mae's eyes turn from Terrient to me and back to him. "This is Princess Loraina Erelaria. We have escaped from the Allerakins, who have just attacked our home. I was riding with her when it happened, and we were able to escape. I was wondering if you could take her in."

"I am sorry, dear boy," The gray-haired woman intervened quickly, "I have no money or luxury for both, or even one of you. You'll just have to find somewhere else."

"You will not take me, just the girl. I have a job back in Erelaria, a day's ride away from here. I will visit and give you money for as long as it is safe." The lady purses her lips, staring at the creaky plank floor as she weighs the two options. "I will buy all of her needs and more," Terrient continued. "Please, Aunt Mae, please."

"Oh, well," the woman sighs, leaning on a stick, "But only on those conditions." The old woman lights a lantern and hobbles upstairs to second floor. She glances around the open room, shaking her head. "It's not a dream, but it will do." I slowly melt onto the ground and begin to snore.

In the morning, I wake up to see the sun struggling to get through the cracks in the planks, boarding off the window. I leap off the splintering, wooden plank floor and dig my fingers underneath the rotting boards. Using all of my strength, I pull. The boards come off, but I end up on the floor.

"Loran?" Aunt- or Omama Mae calls. "Breakfast!" I pound down the steps, still in my riding boots. Though I don't know much English, I remember when I was very little, maybe three, when Omam still used English. She would call me to 'breakfast', that strange morning meal. Now, she always refers to it as tasbeak, as all other Erelarians do.

Terrient and Omama Mae are already at the table, and as the three of us finish the loaf of bread from yesterday, the two fill me in on the plan: I am Loran. I am fourteen- not thirteen years old and coming to visit my grandmother (again, an English word) on vacation. As soon as we realize how dangerous Erelaria is, the story will change so that I am staying while Erelaria is in war, or whatever happens. We all must pretend that our loyalties lie to Allerakin.

Omama Mae takes me out into the village while Terrient heads back to his job with a promise to return next week. We first purchase a thick blanket, a few candles, and a blank school book, using the money left over from selling Rollie. We then find a sack of potatoes that we can eat and reuse the sack as a pillow and a bunch of straw for free that I can make a bed out of. With the extra money we buy a bit of dried fruit and hard bread, some grains and nuts. It all goes home, where I unload it on an old coiled rug in the attic. I walk downstairs.

"Omama Mae?" She is sitting at the fire and playing with a bit of yarn, weaving it from finger to finger.

"Yes, child?" She looks up from her work and stares at my face.

"Do you have anything I can clean the floor with?"

She thinks for a moment, finger on her lip. "I believe so." She sits up and grabs her walking stick, hobbling as she leads me into a back room. There, A broom is propped the corner next to a wooden bucket pre-filled with water. I lift it as she pulls a potato sack from a nearby shelf and shakes it out.

I watch carefully as she fits the sack around the broom and ties the edge of the sack to itself. It creates a broom-like item with, instead of many small bristles, only one big one. I thank Omama Mae and rush upstairs, water sloshing as I go.

I begin my scrubbing the floor with the water and broom. I dip and scrub the floor, dip, scrub, dip, scrub. The floor is much cleaner by the time we are done, but my back is sore so I lay out the straw and place the thick blanket on top of it. It looks a lot more homey compared to the dark and gloomy room that I set foot in last night.

I curl up on the bed and look up at the rafters. I don't want to be a burden. I want Grandma Mae to find me to be a blessing. But how can I be one? In just a few days, I will probably be the most wanted person in all of Pinia. Sitting up, I undo my boots and slump downstairs. Grandma Mae is peeling the potatoes. "Make yourself useful, child. Just because you are a princess it doesn't mean that I will treat you like one." She pokes me with her stick. I sit down at the table set for four, across from Grandma Mae.

"How can I help?"
"Cut these," The woman croaks as she thrusts forward a knife and some potatoes that have already been peeled.

We work for many counts with silence beside the knife going through the potatoes and landing on the board.

"Grandma Mae?" I ask when there are no more potatoes to cut.

"Mm?" She responds, continuing to peel.

"What are we making?"

"Potato Soup, if I can remember the recipe."

"Do you have a pot?"

She nods and gestures towards the counter, which is really just a bit of scrap wood nailed against the wall in a corner, travels the extent of the wall, and is held up by a pole. It doesn't really look strong, but I guess it suits her fine.

Hung on the wall behind the counter are a pot and a pan. I pull down the pot and scoop the potato cuts into it.

"With water. You have to boil the potatoes." I sigh and grab the bucket.

"Grandma Mae? Where is it? Where is the water?" I speak in my bad English.

"Behind the house." I set out the front door as I translate that inside my head. I know what the and house are, but behind? The maids at the castle never taught me that. I decide to just circle the house, and, sure enough, the well can be found behind the house. I'd have to remember that behind means fronid.

Once loaded up with water, I dodge a chicken and head back around the house to the front door. We pour some water into the pot with the potato cuts and place it over the stove.

"Loran. We need milk from the cow." I take a deep breath. I know the words cow, the, and we, but I wasn't so sure about milk, need, and from. Grandma Mae hands me another bucket.

What can we get that has something to do with a cow and is liquid, I think. The answer screams at me faster than you can say cow. Milk! I set off to fill the pail with milk.

In the backyard that is only big enough for a well and a tiny stable, chickens are running about. I count four as I head into the stable, where a horse is standing up in a stall and a cow is lying down in hers.

"Lu!" I shout. The cow doesn't move. I search my brain for the English way to say up.

Viv is down, I think, the teacher maids' voice ringing in my head. Lu is... Lu is... Up!

"Up!" I shout, and the poor cow gets up without hesitation. I smile at my improving English, to proud to keep it in. I squat on the floor, and place my hand on the udder like I've seen Terrient do a million times. I pull it down and squeeze. A stream of white, creamy liquid comes streaming into the pail. I continue squeezing and pulling until the pail is halfway full, and then stand up and pick up the pail.

Shutting the door to the cow's stall, I hop over a stray chicken and hold my head high as I cross the back porch to a back door.

The door opens to a little breezeway. On either side of me are shelves attached to the wall. Most of them are empty, but a few have goods like jam or vegetables. It is the room where Omama Mae had previously found the broom and sack. I open the next possible door, which leads back to the main room.

I hand Grandma Mae the bucket and sit down. "You start school as soon as people know about the attack. Start studying." Grandma Mae says as she hangs up a wooden spoon she had been using to stir the potatoes.

I head up the creaky stairs to my attic bedroom. The window overlooks the crowded city street. I sigh as I watch the children that look my age throwing a stuffed potato sack. One girl, after throwing the sack to another, looks up and sees me at the window. Her blonde hair falls in way of her face. While she brushes it off, I sit on my straw bed and take the blank book off of the ground.

The paper inside has nothing on it but darker marks and lighter blotches. I pick up a reed brush and bone jar of ink and remove the fat, which keeps the ink from spilling. I dip the brush in the dark ink and slowly paint the English letters on the back page. A. B. C. D. E. In Erelarian Script, we wrote completely differently. But o's are similar and l's are just flipped, making it easier to remember. I am at y when Grandma Mae calls me down. She has ladled the soup into two separate bowls, and the extra soup into jars, I sit down and pick up my spoon.

"Wait."

I look at her in shock. Though I do not know all English words, I know that one.

"It's polite to wait for everyone to be here." She sits down.

I am silent for a moment as I take a bite of soup. "What does polite mean?"

She stares at me with a quizzical look on her face.

"Manners, maybe." I stare at her with a blank expression. Manners? Never heard of that. I shake my head. "Hmmm... Showing good behavior?" I sigh, dropping my spoon back down to the bowl. I'm helpless.

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